The government’s Advisory Committee on Packaging (ACP) has said that councils should be responsible for supplying markets with recycled material.

Writing in the foreword to ACP’s annual report, Chairman Bob Lisney, said: ‘In a recovery system which is fragmented at the point of collection in the domestic sector by public sector statutory roles, it is easy to see that this creates a challenge in a market driven system. Thus one of our recommendations is to suggest that local councils be given a statutory role to play a role of supplier of materials to the market as well as its role to provide general services for waste and recycling.’

The report goes on to say that the government should encourage councils to ‘use the new contract specifications and advice developed by WRAP and iESE [Improvement and Efficiency South East]’ and suggests that the PRN/PERN system should also be reviewed as there is evidence that there are differences that disadvantage UK-based reprocessors.

A spokesman for the Environmental Services Association (ESA) said that though the organisation “advocated the benefits of an integrated approach to ensuring that collection methods, recovery infrastructure and end markets are aligned as effectively as possible”, it was “not quite sure how the new statutory responsibility referred to by the ACP would work in practice”. The spokesperson went on to say that the ESA would, however, be interested to see the detail of the proposals when available.

“We were also interested to note that the ACP chose to recommend a preferred procurement route for local authorities [the iESE framework], which is not something which appears to us to be within their core remit”, he added.

The recommendations in the ACP report also included:

• Industry groups should provide greater research-based evidence on the potential impacts of the identified trends in packaging by the end of 2012 so that forecast may be derived by the spring;
  • Defra in its meetings with the Department of Communities and Local Government and the devolved administrations should firmly support and encourage councils to use the new contract specifications and advice developed by WRAP and iESE;
  • WRAP and industry representatives should support councils who currently do not collect bottles to bring on additional services for bottle collection within a deliverable timeframe;
  • Guidance to householders about which plastic materials (bottles and mixed rigids) can be put out for recycling should be further developed and communicated;
  • Government should reduce the burden placed on small businesses by packaging regulations by raising the current financial threshold level from £2 million turnover to £4 million with the tonnage threshold remaining the same.

The full annual report for 2011/12 can be found on the National Packaging Waste Database website.